by Dani Collins
Raoul didn’t know what to make of her announcement that she was going out for the evening. His brows almost went through his hairline, but she didn’t let that deter her.
“Amber is a friend who moved to Canada years ago. She’s coming into London tonight. It’s her only free time, so I’d like to join her for tapas and a drink and leave Lucy with you.”
“Are you sure you’re up for it?” he asked with one of those sweeping glances that lit fires all over her.
“Of course,” she said more stridently than she intended, but the way she tingled every time he so much as turned his head in her direction was driving her crazy. She couldn’t wait to get Amber’s objective view of this situation.
With a shrug, Raoul said, “Pack a bag and we’ll stay at the penthouse. That way you won’t be so late getting in and I can go into the office in the morning. We’ll test-drive one aspect of this arrangement I’ve suggested.”
One aspect. Part of her wanted to refuse on principle, but she liked the idea of a shorter trip home. Her doctor was pleased with her progress, but between Lucy’s needs and her body’s wants, she wasn’t sleeping enough.
And by the time she’d packed, driven in, unpacked and settled the baby, she was ready for bed, not a night on the town. She put on a black skirt and ruffled green top anyway. Both were a bit tight. At least her hair was an asset. She’d been clipping it up for months and hadn’t realized how much it had grown. She rather liked it clouding around her shoulders, drawing attention from her still-thick waist. Wearing heels and makeup for the first time in ages, she looked pretty good.
Echoes of her stepmother’s critical voice swept through her, cataloging her flaws and bringing Sirena down a smidge, but she had been practicing how to block that painful denigration for years. She stood straight and ignored the whispers of insecurity, jumping when Raoul appeared in her bedroom doorway.
“Who is this Amber?” he asked in a dark growl.
“A friend from school.” Sirena turned from the mirror, a wicked slide of excitement careening through her as she took him in.
He wore jeans and a button-down shirt open at his throat, cuffs rolled up to his forearms. He was the man who always made butterflies invade her middle.
“You dress like this for a woman?” His gaze made a slow, thorough study of her from collarbone to ankles.
“This is all that fits. I can’t show up in my sweats and trainers. Or do you mean I look like a pile of socks pushed into a leg of tights? Should I change?” Her hand went to the zip of her skirt.
His expression was dumbfounded. “Yes. No,” he insisted. “You look fine. Excellent. Beautiful. You’re not meeting a man?”
“Because my dating profile of ‘unemployed new mum with custody issues’ is so irresistible? No. I’m meeting a girlfriend. I wish you would quit calling me a liar.”
“I called you beautiful,” he said with a raking glance of masculine hunger, his frown both askance and...not critical, but not pleased.
She curled her toes in her shoes, disconcerted by how admiring and possessive he seemed. “I wasn’t fishing for flattery.”
He barred the door with his arm.
An uncomfortable silence stretched as her stepmother’s voice did a number on her again, cataloging the extra pounds and shadows under her eyes and lack of a manicure, but as Raoul skimmed his gaze down her figure once more, and his expression reflected nothing but male approval, she felt quite beautiful.
The swirling sensation in her abdomen redoubled and little sensors in her body began reaching out toward him, tugging her with magnetic power toward him.
She forced herself to stand still, but he dropped his arm and stepped forward until he was standing right in front of her, towering despite her heels. His gray eyes shone with a startlingly warm regard as he scanned her face and hair. Strong hands came up to frame her face with disconcerting tenderness.
Her breath stalled in her lungs as he started to bend his head, his gaze on her mouth.
“What are you doing?” she managed, pressing against his chest.
He paused, gaze smoky with intent. “Reminding you that if a man comes on to you tonight, you have one right here willing to satisfy your needs.”
He began to lower his head again but she leaned away.
“Don’t smudge my lipstick,” she argued shakily, the best protest she could rouse when her whole body wanted to let his take over. Her breasts ached for contact with the hardness of his chest and heat pooled between her thighs. A fine trembling invaded her limbs, making her weak. Her arms longed to reach out and cling to him.
At the last second, he veered to bury his lips against her neck. His light stubble abraded her skin while his open mouth found a sensitive spot on her nape that took out her knees.
“What are you doing?” she cried, melting into the arms that caught her. Her nipples sharpened into hard points as he applied delicate suction, marking her.
She should have stopped him, but she was held not just by his strength, but by a paralysis of physical joy. Her mouth ached for the press of his while her mind became a turmoil of unconscious thoughts, processing only the sensations of knowing hands skimming her curves as he laid claim to her hips and bottom. He was hard, ready, so tempting—
“You make me lose my mind,” he growled, steadying her before he released her. “Do not start anything with anyone tonight. The car is waiting. That’s what I came to tell you.” He walked out.
* * *
Raoul didn’t resent Sirena taking a night out, but he didn’t like having no right to question her comings and goings and suspected the reason was old-fashioned jealousy. Not an emotion he’d ever experienced, and definitely unwelcome, but she was so hot. As sexy as a year ago, but less buttoned-down and professional. With her hair loose and her full breasts brimming her top, he’d seen what every man in London would see: a beautiful woman.
And he wouldn’t be there to warn them off with a don’t-even-try-it stare.
He shouldn’t have kissed her, but he hadn’t been able to resist imprinting her with the knowledge he wanted her. She’d been skittishly avoiding him since their kiss outside Lucy’s bedroom and he’d been trying to ignore how badly he craved her, but his hunger grew exponentially every day.
It was frustrating as hell, but no matter how uncomfortable they both were with each other, they were equally devoted to Lucy. He couldn’t countenance anything more than a few hours of separation from his child, so he kept coming back to sharing his house with her mother.
Disgruntled, still smelling of her perfume, he waited in the foyer to watch her leave, arms folded.
Sirena appeared, checked her step and flushed. Ducking her head, she opened her pocketbook. “I have my phone if Lucy needs me.”
“We’ll be fine. Do you have David’s number?” he asked, mentioning his London driver.
“Yes, it’s programmed—” She swept her thumb across the screen and frowned. “Oh, I missed this from Amber. She’s sick. That’s disappointing.”
More like devastating, if her body language was anything to go by. Raoul was disgustingly relieved, but as he watched her shoulders fall and the pretty glow of excitement extinguish from her expression, he couldn’t help feeling sorry for her.
She tempered her sad pout into a resigned quirk. “All dressed up and no place to go,” she said wryly. “Sorry to drag you all the way to London for nothing. I guess it’ll be sweats and trainers after all. I’ll just let her know I got the message...” She ducked her head to text a reply.
“You were really looking forward to this,” he commented as she finished.
She shrugged. “We chat online, but it’s like with my sister. Sometimes I want to see her and it’s frustrating when I can’t.” She blinked and he thought he glimpsed tears, but she started back to her room.
“Sirena.”
She stiffened, not turning. “Yes?”
He’d surely regret this, but there was something about the brave face she was pu
tting on and hell, she looked amazing. He couldn’t let this butterfly crawl back into her shapeless cocoon.
“Come have a drink with me.” He jerked his head toward the unlit lounge.
“What? No. Why? I’ll be feeding Lucy later. I can’t.”
How many shades of refusal was that, he wondered with a twinge between amusement and exasperation.
“We’ll stick to the plan,” he countered. “Have the glass of wine you were planning to have with your friend and I’ll feed Lucy a bottle when she needs it. Going out was obviously something you were anticipating.”
“It wasn’t the wine.” She rolled her eyes. “I wanted to see my friend.”
“So come tell me why she’s so special to you.” He herded her toward the lounge and suspected she only let him because she was trying to pull away from contact with his palm against the small of her back.
“I don’t understand why you’d want me to.” She scuffed her spiky heels as he crowded her into the room with the sunken conversation area and the wet bar in the corner. He gave up trying to steer her and walked ahead of her, turning on a lamp on the end table before he brought the track lighting over the bar up to half power, keeping the mood soothing and intimate.
“You keep accusing me of not taking time to ask about your life. And...” He gestured at where her leg peeked from the slit in her skirt to the ruffles that framed her cleavage. “I can’t stand the idea of this going to waste. I’d take you out, but unlike you I haven’t arranged a sitter. Here. Have a seat and tell the bartender about your day.”
He held one of the high stools and she hesitated before warily scooting her hip onto it. He let his gaze linger on the curve of her pert backside as it flowed into the slope of her lower back. Damn, but he wanted to stroke and claim.
Thief, he reminded himself, but it didn’t do much to quell his hunger. Rounding the bar, he looked for a suitably light white wine in the small cooler.
“I should tell David he’s off for the night,” she said in a tone that put him back a year. Efficient, forward with responsibility and attention to detail, lilting just enough to invite a correction if she was off course. She rarely ever had been, except—
As she placed the call, he gestured for the phone.
She handed it across, brows lifted with inquiry.
He enlightened her as he made his request of David. “We’ve had a change of plans. Can you run to Angelo’s and ask them to make us a couple of plates? Whatever they have on special, but no mushrooms for Sirena. You can go home after that.”
“Are we working late?” she mused facetiously.
“I don’t feel like cooking. Do you?”
“Can you cook? I’ve never seen you try.”
“I can grill a steak.” He was currently polishing glasses like a pro, having picked up both skills working in restaurants for much-needed cash a long time ago.
“But a man in your position never has to do anything, does he?” Her lips curved in a deprecating smile, niggling him into a serious response.
“I’m always irritated by the suggestion I haven’t worked for what I have. I might have been born into a life of privilege, but that bottomed out thanks to my stepfather. Everything I have I built myself, and it comes with obligations and responsibilities that take up time. If I can delegate the small things, like cooking a steak, so I can negotiate a union contract to keep myself and a few hundred people working and fed, I will.” He poured two glasses and pushed one toward her.
She looked at her wine, then gave him a glance of reassessment. Lifting her glass, she awaited the soft clink of his.
“To pleasant conversations between old friends,” she said with gentle mockery.
He leaned back on the far side of the space behind the bar, eyeing her through slitted lids. “I can’t get used to this.”
“Used to what?” She set down her glass and rotated her knees forward so she faced him, elbows braced on the bar’s marble top.
“This woman full of backchat and sarcasm. The one with secrets and a double life. The real you.”
She might have flinched, but her chin quickly came forward to a defiant angle. Her gaze stayed low, showing him a rainbow of subtle shadows on her eyelids. “You’re attributing me with more mystery than I possess. Yes, I’m being more frank with you than I was, but you can’t tell your boss he’s being an arrogant jerk, can you?” She lifted her lashes to level a hard stare at him. “Not if you want to pay the bills.”
He thought about letting this devolve into something serious, but opted to keep things friendly. “I wouldn’t have fired you for saying that,” he assured her, waiting a beat before adding, “I would have said you were wrong.”
Her mouth twitched, then she let the laugh happen and he experienced a sensation like settling into your own sofa or bed. Definitely a bed, he thought as a tingle of pure, masculine craving rose inside him. He let himself admire her painted lips and graceful throat and the exposed alabaster skin on her chest to the swells of her breasts. Why had he never taken her to dinner before?
Oh, right. She had been working for him.
It was freeing not to have that obstacle between them anymore.
Slow down, he reminded himself as she sobered and flicked a glance in his direction. The sexual undercurrents might be acknowledged, finally, but just because he wanted to bed her didn’t mean he should.
Sirena couldn’t take the intense way Raoul was staring at her. Every single day of working for him, she’d longed for him to show some sign of interest in her. Now that he had, it scared the hell out of her. But then, she knew better than to trust he was genuinely interested.
Accosted by harsh memories, she slid off the bar stool and took her wine to the expansive glass windows where the London Eye and the rest of the waterfront stained the river with neon rainbows.
“So is this how you start all your flashy dates? Or do they end here?”
“Flashy?” His image, only partially visible in the dim reflection on the glass, came around the bar to stand like a specter behind her.
“Women line up for the privilege, so I assume a date with you is pretty fantastic. Are they impressed when you bring them back here for a nightcap?” And a thorough seeing to? Don’t think about it.
“I don’t go out of my way to impress, if that’s what you’re implying. Dinner. A show. Does that differ hugely from one of your dates?”
She cut him a pithy look over her shoulder. “Since when do I have time to date?”
He absorbed that with a swallow of wine. “You’ve suggested a few times that I overworked you, but you also want me to believe your private life included a man who could have fathered Lucy. Which is the truth?”
“I was saving face when I said that,” she admitted to the window.
“So I was an ogre who demanded too much? You could have said something.”
Sirena hitched a shoulder, bothered that she felt guilty for not standing up for herself. “I didn’t want to let you down or make you think I couldn’t handle it.” There was her stepmother walking into the room again, tsking with dissatisfaction, setting the bar another notch higher so Sirena would never, ever reach it, no matter how hard she tried. But oh, how she tried, hating to fail and draw criticism. “Some of that’s my own baggage. I’m a workaholic. You can relate, I’m sure.”
He moved to stand beside her. “I thought you were happy with the workload. It didn’t occur to me I was killing your social life. You must have felt a lot of resentment.”
He was jumping to the conclusion that that’s why she’d stolen from him.
“No.” Annoyed, she walked to the far end of the windows. “I never had a social life, so there was nothing to kill.”
“You weren’t a virgin. There was at least one man in your life,” he shot back.
“One,” she agreed, staring into the stemmed glass. “His name was Stephan. We lived together for almost two years, but we were both starving students, so date night was microwave popcorn and wha
tever movie was on the telly.” Stephan had had about a thousand allergies, including alcohol, so even a cheap wine or beer had been out of the question. “Sometimes we went crazy and rented a new release, but my hand-me-down player said ‘bad disc’ half the time, so it wasn’t worth the hassle.”
“You lived with him?” Raoul’s brows went up in askance reaction.
“It’s not the same as dating,” she hurried to argue. “It was—” Convenient. A desperate act in a lonely time. A mistake.
“Serious?” he supplied in a honed voice. He moved a few steps closer, seeming confrontational, which disconcerted her.
“Why are you judging me?” She rounded the conversation area, circling back to the bar, where she took a big gulp of wine before she set down her glass. “All I’m saying is that I never dated. This is turning into a long conversation about nothing.”
“You lived with a man for two years. That’s not nothing, Sirena. Did you talk about marriage?”
“I—” She didn’t want to go there, still feeling awful about it. Crossing her arms, she admitted, “He proposed. It didn’t work out.” There, that was vague enough to keep her from looking as bad as she felt.
“You were engaged—”
“Shh! You’re going to wake Lucy,” she hissed. “Why are you yelling? I’m sorry I said anything.” She looked for her watch, but she’d removed it because it didn’t go with this outfit. “David should be here with the meals soon, shouldn’t he?”
Raoul could barely compute what he was hearing. Another man had been that close to locking Sirena into marriage forever. How could he not have known?
“Did working for me cause the breakup?” he asked with a swift need to know.
“No.” She sounded annoyed.
“What then?” For some reason this was important. He needed to know she’d severed all ties with this other man, irrevocably. “Do you still have feelings for him?”